Linux Foundation and Consumer Electronics Linux Forum to Merge

The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, and the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), a nonprofit organization and international open source software development community focused on embedded Linux, are merging, resulting in the CE Linux Forum becoming a technical workgroup at The Linux Foundation. As part of this merge, The Linux Foundation will expand its technical programs in the embedded computing space.

According to the organizations, the use of Linux in embedded products has increased sharply in recent years, with Linux now being used in consumer electronic devices of all kinds. By combining resources, CELF and The Linux Foundation say they will be able to more efficiently enable the adoption of Linux in the consumer electronics industry.

"CELF has done a good job of stewarding the consumer electronics industry through this period of rapid adoption of Linux," says Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. "By combining their technical work with our broader reach and existing staff and programs, we should be able to foster tighter collaboration between industry and the Linux developer community as well as take Linux to even more devices and more use."

The Linux Foundation is expanding its technical work in the embedded space with the continuation of existing CELF work as well as the formation of another new workgroup focused on the embedded space, the Yocto Project. The Yocto Project will provide open source, high quality tools to help companies make custom Linux-based systems for embedded products, regardless of hardware architecture.

The Linux Foundation invites contributors and encourages developers and others to participate at the Yocto Project website.